me in December.
She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her
for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English
colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with
her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in
her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful,
and all that 'conquers death'. He little knew how soon he would need the
same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife's
poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said,
as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers,
he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some
years afterwards to another friend: 'You are wrong--quite wrong--she has
genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort
of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something--he wants
to make you see it as he sees it--shows you one point of view, carries
you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to
understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you
off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative
power is hers, not mine.'

* Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New
Castle.

Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after their
return to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection to
which she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discovered
grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed to
be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeed
actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning,
dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted,
that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow.

'. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or
hand to name 'Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italy
has gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved
him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely
comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a
man!'

Her death was signalized by the appearance--this time, I am told,
unexpected--of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth
as to come into contact with it.

Chapter 14

1861-1863

Miss Bl